A thought-provoking combination of practical parenting information and scientific analysis, Our Babies, Ourselves is the first book to explore why we raise our children the way we do--and to suggest that we reconsider our culture's traditional views on parenting.New parents are faced with innumerable decisions to make regarding the best way to care for their baby, and, naturally, they often turn for guidance to friends and family members who have already raised children. B...

From the acclaimed author of Our Babies, Ourselves comes an illuminating and thought-provoking look at the nature of family across time and cultures.Family is the most ubiquitous and persistent human social group. Everyone across the world has a family, even if that family has been lost, broken, or transformed. Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith Small, author of Our Babies, Ourselves, examines the very roots of the family and why this particular ty...

An epic cultural journey that reveals how Venetian ingenuity and inventions—from sunglasses and forks to bonds and currency—shaped modernity.How did a small, isolated city—with a population that never exceeded 100,000, even in its heyday—come to transform western civilization? Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith Small, the author of the groundbreaking Our Babies, Ourselves examines the the unique Venetian social structure that was key to their explosion of c...

**The remarkable story of the cartographic masterpiece—the Venetian mappa mundi—that revolutionized how we see the world.In 1459 a Venetian monk named Fra Mauro completed an astonishing map of the world. Seven feet in diameter, Fra Mauro’s mappamundi is the oldest and most complete Medieval map to survive into modernity. And in its time, this groundbreaking mappamundi provided the most detailed description of the known world, incorporating accura...

To what extent do our parenting practices help or hinder our children? As parents, how much influence do we have over what kind of people our children will grow up to be? In the follow-up to her critically acclaimed Our Babies, Ourselves, Cornell anthropologist Meredith Small now takes on these and other crucial questions about the development of preschool children aged one to six.“A revealing perspective on how and why we raise children as we do.”...

A once beautiful woman in a little black dress, designer stiletto heels, and a long string of expensive pearls floats face down in a turbulent pool at the base of a local waterfall, her long auburn hair streaming in the current and her skull bashed in. Homicide Detective First Grade Grace McLeod, a Big City exile now living and working a small college town, knows one thing immediately: this is no suicide...not with those pearls. She recognizes Renata Durand, head of the University Developm...

**In this refreshingly down-to-earth exploration of human mating and sexuality, an acclaimed anthropologist looks at why we fall in love with the people we do."A personal feminist take on the mating game." —Scientific American**An acclaimed anthropologist looks at the fascinating intersection between the imperatives of our glands and genes, and the culture in which we live. Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Is there an alternative, more feminist, way to...

A sweeping, thought-provoking exploration of how humans think about the world and themselvesHumans are the product of millions of years of evolution as well as various forces of culture that influence how we think. Humans also spend much of their brain power on self-reflection. We want to understand ourselves, to decide if there is a universal “human nature” or if we are cultural beings that can think our way out of everything. Can we agree on who we are and what m...

The remarkable story of the cartographic masterpiece—the Venetian ***mappa mundi—***that revolutionized how we see the world.In 1459 a Venetian monk named Fra Mauro completed an astonishing map of the world. Seven feet in diameter, Fra Mauro's mappamundi is the oldest and most complete Medieval map to survive into modernity. And in its time, this groundbreaking mappamundi provided the most detailed description of the known world, ...

‘Witty, rigorous, and as urgent as a fire alarm’ Dorian Lynskey‘Cooly prosecutorial’ GuardianNobody meant for this to happen.Facebook didn’t mean to facilitate a genocide.Twitter didn’t want to be used to harass women.YouTube never planned to radicalise young men.But with billions of users, these platforms need only tweak their algorithms to generate more ‘engagement’. In so doing, t...

The Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war is a crime to which there are no witnessesWINNER OF THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZECommitted in utmost secrecy in April–May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly fifty years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi atrocity, their story unchallenged by Western govern...

War, revolution, treason and love – the thrilling tale of Sir John of Gaunt brought to life by medieval history's rising star.‘The Red Prince announces Helen Carr as one of the most exciting new voices in narrative history.’ Dan JonesSon of Edward III, brother to the Black Prince, father to Henry IV and the sire of all the Tudors. Always close to the English throne, John of Gaunt left a complex legacy. Too rich, too powerful, too h...